Peter Helliar ranks his worst reality TV meals and reveals why doing theatre always scared him

The Amazing Race star reveals the moment that made him gag on TV and why he is scared about his next career move.

Peter Helliar’s stomach and tastebuds have been through a lot over the past couple of years.

Since the versatile veteran comedian added reality TV to his already bulging CV with stints on the 2023 season of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here (he came seventh) and the current season of The Celebrity Amazing Race, he’s been obliged to eat a variety of foods that frankly would make a billy goat puke.

After very close elimination calls due to a bicycle repair fail and getting lost in last week’s episodes, Helliar and his wife Bridget are still alive in the Amazing Race, but it’s fair to say that eating chicken heads and feet in South Africa – or the cow’s head meal challenge that preceded it – probably won’t make his final career highlights reel.

“Well, it’s ahead of fermented tofu and pigs anus from I’m a Celebrity … I will say that,” Helliar says with a laugh from Brisbane, where is rehearsing for his first proper foray into musical theatre.

“But maybe behind cows head. The cow’s head wasn’t particularly disgusting as such – there was just a lot of it. And (the chicken) was kind of disgusting because sometimes, you’d take a bite into the head of it, and you feel the brain squish between your teeth. So that wasn’t pleasant.”

Comedian Peter Helliar on the The Amazing Race Celebrity Edition.

Apart from their near misses, Helliar and his wife of more than 20 years have made a solid team on the globetrotting reality TV show thus far and he puts it down to realistic expectations of each other and the amount of travel they had already done together. Just over a decade ago, the pair backpacked around Europe with their three pre-teen sons and figured that if they could get through that in one piece, then “the Amazing Race would be a walk in the park”.

Peter Helliar teamed up with his wife Bridget on the The Amazing Race Celebrity Edition.

“It wasn’t quite a walk in the park, but we had done a lot of the preparation,” Helliar says of the woman he calls his drinking partner and best friend. “Most of the work we did was watching episodes from last season and going back through the last few seasons and that got us talking about emotionally how we would handle situations, and what if this happened and what if that happened?

“We work together really well … but there were certainly moments. We just had a rule that we wouldn’t blame each other for anything. There’s a chance that we’ll get eliminated at some point and it’ll probably be one of our faults, so, let’s ahead of time be accepting of that.

“I didn’t choose Brig to avoid an awkward marital conversation – it was that she was the best person in my life to bring along.”

The ever-industrious Helliar is also on our screens as of this week alongside Aaron Chen, Mel Buttle, Rhys Nicholson and Concetta Caristo in the new season of Taskmaster, the comedy game show in which the stand-ups are tasked with completing ridiculous chores for maximum laughs and then are awarded a score out of five for their efforts.

Helliar had been tipped into the original UK version of the show by his friend and former co-host on The Project, Waleed Aly, and went back for a deep dive into the local version, hosted by his long-time mate Tom Gleeson. He says that after a decade on The Project, he relished the prospect of getting “to be silly and just backing in your comedy brain in the moment”.

The performative improvisation of the tasks took him back to his early days in stand-up at the seminal Melbourne comedy club Elbow Grease, when he and a couple of friends would take to the streets with a camera to create an impromptu movie.

Peter Helliar on the third season of Taskmaster.

“We would get up there and ask the audience to give us a genre, a phrase or a line, and a prop and we would go out whilst the comedy night was going, around the streets of North Carlton and just film a movie and come back at the end of the night and show it. And just some of the Taskmaster stuff reminded me of that – the thrill of just going ‘this isn’t going to be perfect, but we’re just going to throw some stuff at the wall and see and see what sticks. It was just fun.”

Being judged by the acid-tonged Gleeson however, was occasionally rough. Helliar says that despite being a firm believer that when sharing a stage with other comedians, everyone wins if the audience is laughing, there were nonetheless times when the individuals thought they had aced their task – only to be eviscerated by the judge.

“What’s fun about watching Taskmaster is sometimes you catch those moments where the comedian is not playing anymore,” he says. “They are not being performative – there’s a genuine hurt and surprise. And as a viewer, I love those moments. There are times where it is playful and performative but there are times where it’s like ‘I can’t believe you didn’t give me a better score’.”

As he closes in on the big 5-0 next year, Helliar has already produced an astonishing amount of work over a wide array of media, which is exactly the kind of “eclectic career” he wanted when he started out nearly three decades ago. In addition to his regular stand-up and TV work, he’s also written kids’ books, TV shows and a movie, done radio, hosted podcasts and directed. But he says that taking to the stage alongside Colin Lane, Alison Whyte and Olivia Deeble to sing and dance in Peter and the Starcatcher, which opens in Canberra next month and will then tour the country, is as steep a learning curve as he’s ever been on.

Helliar will starr in his first musical theatre role in Peter and the Starcatcher, based on Peter Pan. Picture: David Crosling

“They lied to me about the amount of singing and dancing I’ll be doing” he says with a laugh about his role as the pirate Smee in the five-time Tony Award-winning Peter Pan origin story.

“They gave me sheet music on day one and I was like ‘what did you give me this for? Is this to write notes on the back of for something else?’.

He’d dipped his toe in the genre with a month-long stint as the Narrator in the most recent Sydney run of The Rocky Horror Show but admits that theatre had always scared him.

“People are surprised to hear that because I do stand-up,” he says. “But with stand-up, if you make a mistake, you fix it yourself. But if I don’t run out and hit the mark at the same time, or move something at the right time, or remember a line – everyone kind of gets affected.

“It’s a lot but I am genuinely, sincerely loving it.”

And what of the football-mad Helliar’s famous comedy alter-ego? The perennially hopeful/delusional Collingwood stalwart Strauchanie is apparently pulling for a Swans victory in this weekend’s AFL Grand Final due to his enduring love of former Pies ruckman Brodie Grundy.

“It’s a good question,” says Helliar, when asked of Strauchanie’s future plans. “I think he was looking forward to playing with Christian Petracca at Collingwood next year – but that didn’t work out in two ways.

Helliar as Strauchanie with Luke Darcy. Picture: Andrew Hobbs Photography

“He’s currently occasionally on Tik-Tok recording Cameos, as well as on Cameo for birthday parties and events. He’s good to keep around and he pops his head up in the most unlikely places. He’s still hopeful. I think he’s happy Collingwood didn’t go back, to back to be honest. He thinks that opens the window for him.”

The Celebrity Amazing Race, Sunday, 7pm, Channel 10. Taskmaster Australia, Tuesday, 7.30pm, Channel 10.

Originally published as Peter Helliar ranks his worst reality TV meals and reveals why doing theatre always scared him